The golf ball-size hail that pelted space shuttle Atlantis earlier this week, dimpling its fuel tank, did enough damage that NASA has decided to cancel its March launch plans and send the shuttle back inside for repairs.
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| NASA postpones shuttle launch after hail storm pelts Atlantis' external fuel tank |
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 BREAKING NEWS |
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The launch, planned for March 15, was pushed back to at least late April.
"At this point, we don't see anything that looks irreparable, but we really want to get it back to where we can look at it up close," said John Chapman, external tank manager.
NASA announced Tuesday that technicians planned to move the shuttle back to a giant hangar as early as this weekend and then decide whether repairs can be made at the Kennedy Space Center or whether the tank needs to be returned to its manufacturer in New Orleans.
The hail storm left a ring of dents on the upper reaches of the 153-foot-tall (47-meter) external tank. It also crushed some foam along wedge-shaped brackets, an area where the shuttle in the past has shed foam a potential danger. It did some cosmetic damage to more than two dozen tiles along the shuttle's left wing.
"This constitutes, in our evaluation, the worst damage we have ever seen from hail on the external tank foam," said Wayne Hale, manager of the space shuttle program.
The launch of Atlantis would have to be after a Russian Soyuz vehicle completes a mission to the international space station in the first part of April, putting the next opportunity likely between late April and late May, officials said.
The three-member crew of the space station, who had been preparing for their visitors next month, will have to rearrange their work schedules. Two members U.S. cosmonaut Michael Lopez-Alegria and Russian flight engineer Mikhail Tyurin will be back on Earth by the time Atlantis visits.
"We're a little bit bummed out with the fact that (the space shuttle) isn't going to be here," U.S. space station crew member Sunita Williams said in an interview from space Wednesday morning.
NASA managers had hoped to fly five shuttle missions in 2007, the most ambitious schedule in five years. Atlantis' flight was set to be the first of the year; the second was set for June.
Hale said he was confident the goal of five flights could still be met. He said, "There might be some small effect on a couple of later flights, but by the time we roll around to the end of the year, I expect we would be fully able to catch back up."
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